John Waters: how one of the film world's most prolifically wacky directors became Broadway's unlikely new multi-million-dollar baby

Interview, May, 2008 by Gary Indiana

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The interview that follows takes place in John Waters's apartment in New York the day after a press preview for Cry-Baby, the Broadway musical based on the 1990 Waters film that launched the movie career of Johnny Depp. Since the Broadway success of Hairspray, it isn't hard to imagine a whole slew of Waters's movies becoming Broadway plays, operas at the Met, ice shows, and television series.

GARY INDIANA: Do you care about the presidential elections? Or do you think it'll be the same old thing no matter who wins?

JOHN WATERS: I always vote. Sometimes I've voted more than once, illegally.

GI: Well, so did Edgar Allan Poe--in Baltimore, too.

JW: But you can't anymore. The picture ID has ruined everything.

GI: When did you start working as a commentator for Court TV?

JW: I'm not a commentator for Court TV. I had a show on Court TV called 'Til Death Do Us Part. Every week it was about real married couples who killed one another. I was kind of like the Rod Serling or the Alfred Hitchcock, making snide comments. I was the narrator, too. I'm right in the middle of negotiating the renewal of the show, but the channel is now called truTV. When they called me up, I was like, "Is it all about Truman Capote now?"

GI: So has the success of Hairspray gone to your bank account?

JW: Yes. I'll say this: I've certainly made more from Hairspray--the musical, not the new movie--than anything I've ever made in my whole life. I'm very thankful to Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who were very fair with me and brought me into the deal from the very beginning. It has been a great experience.

GI: You don't involve yourself with the nuts and bolts of Broadway theater, right?

JW: Well, I've been involved on Cry-Baby from the very beginning. The people who have the jobs--I hired them with the producers. So I'm involved in that part of it. I'm like a studio executive. I certainly had a big word in who was hired and the creative team. I had a word in who was cast, and I give notes on the script. I have gotten so spoiled by Broadway. It's gone really smoothly. Sometimes I imagine that people think I was this idiot savant sitting around Baltimore in a trailer, eating shit and dating drag queens. I understand what they mean. But, I've always been optimistic. I've always believed anything could happen in America and in show business. Hairspray [1988] and Cry-Baby were the two movies I would have picked to put onstage. I want Pink Flamingos [1972] to be an opera. It was optioned once to be one--actually, they never paid the option. But it could be a good one.

GI: What else are you working on now?

JW: I'm writing a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux called Role Models, and I'm working on my movie. It's written. We were hoping to shoot it this winter because it's a terribly wonderful Christmas movie. It's called Fruitcake. We're hoping to shoot now in Baltimore in '09. I am also having two art shows--one at Marianne Boesky and the other at Gagosian Gallery in L.A. Then I have Cry-Baby opening. That's a lot, isn't it? I have a lot of folders on my desk.

GI: Maybe they'll do another Broadway musical version of one of your movies. I thought maybe Pecker [1998] or Serial Mom [1994].

JW: Serial Mom has been pitched as a weekly TV series. That seems better to me, where each week she kills someone for her kids and for political correctness. That's an idea that's out there--a folder that I didn't tell you about. I thought that Female Trouble [1974] could be a great Broadway musical because the main character can end the finale in the electric chair with all of the pro-death picketers outside the jail. That's the one I'm pitching next. I don't know about Pecker. It's about the art world. People singing about contemporary art, minimalism, discounts, and killing rooms--that's maybe a new concept. I don't know how wide-reaching it would be.

GI: So this may be not very nicely phrased, but, you know, you have a trademark look and a trademark personality, and I happen to know that you are very thoughtful and a really quite serious person in your everyday fife.

JW: Yes, I'm serious about my career.

GI: But you're also very erudite and you have a lot of qualities that would be considered intellectual by the people who maybe think of you in a different way.

JW: Okay.

GI: Do you ever feel that you have to conceal part of yourself to project--

JW: I know what you're saying. No, because I actually think that my films are intellectual. I think almost everything I do is intellectual, but I would never say that, because that's a compliment. That's up to others to say about me. The same way, I would never say I do art. I think art is up to history. It's up to other people to utter that word. So t try to be humble, and I never say anything bad about something unless it's something that everyone in America loves and has made a million dollars. Who cares if I say anything? I learned a long time ago that people like my work because I praise things that others don't like, and as soon as I say something negative about somebody, I go to a dinner party and I'm seated next to them accidentally.